The Swift Personal Spaceplane

Ever since the Xprize competition was running, We've been inspired to design craft that could perform a suborbital flight to greater than 100 Kilometres. In order to design something that had a chance of ever being built, we simplified the mission to a single-person craft that was only partly reusable: a craft carried to high altitude by helium balloon prior to launch from the balloon.

The craft will use an uprated version of our nitrous oxide hybrids, and will be launched off the North coast of Scotland, to re-enter and glide to any airstrip or beach within glide range. Simulations show that a mere 500 litres of nitrous oxide, which equates to a spherical tank about one metre diameter, is enough to reach Space!

The craft incorporates sharp nose and leading-edges, and underside concavity, in order to Waveride during the pullup manoeuvre from vertical fall to horizontal glide during re-entry: maximising supersonic lift significantly reduces the re-entry 'gees' suffered, as well as the maximum airspeeds and heating encountered.

As you can see, we've incorporated stabilising 'feathers' as on Spaceship One which was designed by Burt Rutan (my hero since childbirth). We didn't invent the parachute either, but it would be foolish not to have one; both Rutan's feathers and the parachute are fundamental additions that greatly enhance safety on this type of vehicle.

Our initial goal is to launch a radio-controlled scale model of the Swift under hybrid power from a very high-altitude weatherballoon for charity.

More details of the Swift project can be found in the following downloadable Powerpoint presentation: Swift_project